(Lack of) truth in advertising (June 27)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

No one is smarter than a blackfly

                        by Robert LaFrance, Blackfly Gazette

            Wouldn’t it be great if companies with TV commercials were forced to tell the truth?

            I am still recovering from injuries incurred when I fell off a barstool as I was watching an Air Canada commercial. The syrup-voiced announcer said “Air Canada’s first priority is its passengers”.

            The day that Air Canada, Westjet, any insurance company, car dealership, bank or Donald Trump decides that the customer or any other follower is their first priority will be the day the sun rises in the west and Kraft starts putting vinegar in its peanut butter.

            At the age of seventy, I have finally stopped searching for a company or any other entity whose top priority is NOT to make all the money it can, as soon as it can, and to hell with the customer.

            True, there are isolated pockets of resistance, as the phrase goes, where business people such as Paul and Bev Clark were very generous to their community and surrounding area, but as a rule companies don’t allow such largesse.

            Sobey’s had a Foodland grocery store in Perth-Andover and employed about thirty people, but closed down that store and put them all out of work although the store was making a profit. Somebody with a sharp pen in Truro, Montreal of somewhere – probably someone who had never been in Perth-Andover – decided Foodland wasn’t making enough profit. Zip zap and there go the jobs. Same thing with the restaurant located at the Ultramar station. A Toronto bean-counter slashed that without a pang of conscience.

            A few decades ago I used to stop every week at an Irving Convenience store in Beechwood until I drove there one day only to find it had been bulldozed flat. Rumour was that at the time Irving demanded a 3% profit from each of its similar stores and the profit was only 2.8%. I wouldn’t know and my opinion isn’t important anyway. Zip zap!

            Rural New Brunswick, indeed rural Canada, have been under attack for decades now and it ain’t gonna change. By rural New Brunswick I mean any place smaller than Edmundston. Downtown metropolitan Perth-Andover and Plaster Rock aren’t even  ‘urban’ in the government ‘mind’.

            We can quickly see how unimportant we are in the eyes of government by foolishly deciding to get a civil servant on the phone. Tried that lately? By the time you go though all the voicemail robots, you are exhausted and all you were able to accomplish was to leave voice messages in six places you will never hear from again. Governments, banks and others don’t want to talk to us. Let’s accept that and move on.

                                                ******************

            Last evening I was working in my apple orchard when I found out, not for the first time, that I was nowhere nearly as smart as a blackfly.

            This may not be a surprise to the average reader of this column, and yes I know none of you is average. In fact I would say you are well above average. The point is that any blackfly off the street is smarter than I am.

            Wearing a Tilley hat (makes sense because I was born in Tilley), I was out pruning trees when it because clear that any blackfly with a moderate education knows enough to wait until I have both hands occupied and can’t slap him or her down.

            In one case I was wielding some hand shears on my right and a pruning saw on my left when a squadron of B-52s attacked from all directions. (B-52 refers to 5200 blackflies.) I fought bravely, not in the Victoria Cross manner but still I tried hard; I was no match for them. I threw down my tools and started trying to murderize as many as I could as I dashed to the house. Platoons of mosquitoes arrived to join the blackflies. I did make it to the kitchen door and inside, but not before a squad of mooseflies bit me in  places and places I thought I had covered.

            I dashed into the downstairs bathroom and slammed the door; I could still hear the buzzing out in the dining room. One moosefly the size of a space canary (so big he could have worn a saddle) tried to get under the door but I despatched him with a big box of Tide and a Swiffer.

            If I am around next year some things will have to change. I won’t have six gardens that range in size from pool table dimensions to Olympic size pool, I will rig up a shower that dispenses DEET-filled insecticide, I will spend more time inside getting to know my television, and finally, I will get rid of the notion that I am smarter than a blackfly because I ain’t.
                                                -end-

Probably not 400 metres from my house (June 13)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Sleeping with a certain farm animal

                        by Robert LaFrance

            No matter what you or I ever thought of Pierre Trudeau, the late Prime Minister of Canada, everyone has to admit he was rather intelligent and at times even brilliant. One of the most famous quotes in Canadian modern history occurred on March 25, 1969, when he was addressing the Washington Press Club at their annual dinner and bloodbath.

            Referring to the huge American economy compared to the rather smaller Canadian one, he said: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

            These days, times have changed a bit, but we are still affected by each twitch and grunt from south of the 49^th parallel. One thing has changed: although Canada is still a mouse – economically but certainly not culturally – the beast to the south of us has changed from being an elephant to another farm animal. Not to be too rude, but since January 2017 I would say our Canadian mouse now has to sleep next to a horse’s ass.

                                                *****************

            Still on the edge of the same subject – trash – I must say that the new ‘Region wide curbside recycling’ program the New Brunswick government has produced seems a little – shall we say? – illogical.

            A quick visual scan - I think that means I looked at it - told me that things that we have been recycling for years can not be put into the official recycling barrel that we’re all supposed to get before June 30.

            Plastics #3, #6 and #7 are no longer accepted and nothing that hasn’t been cleaned (like dirty pizza boxes) will be accepted. No more putting plastic shopping bags into the recycling and no film plastics, by which I guess they mean Saran Wrap and its friends.

            I put quite a bit of thought into this, so much that my head is now hurting, and I have come to this conclusion: we will now be able to recycle about one-third of the volume that we recycled before. Hey, that’s real progress. Within a few more years, if things keep heading in the same direction, we will just put everything we want to throw away into the trash – partying like it’s 1985.

            Still on the subject of roadside trash collection, we find that the company that has been collecting our trash (almost) every Wednesday morning has gone bankrupt or has met with some other fate and has been replaced by another company.

            It was probably a seamless handover in most places, but Murphy’s Law prevailed for good old Bob LaFrance. When I awoke at the crack of noon that day, my 45-gallon steel barrel was Missing In Action. The only thing I could think of was that the new trash-sters, or garbologists as Jon Gee used to say, thinking I was throwing out my disreputable barrel, had tossed it into their truck and crushed it.

            Oh I’m not mad, or at least not angry mad, because that old metal barrel didn’t even have a bottom. The fact that it was metal kept the scavengers away.

            Bottom line: I don’t have a metal trash barrel now and the raccoons, skunks, aardvarks and unicorns are having a great time devouring all those delicious food wrappers even though they have been washed. This morning I fried half a dozen eggs and a pound of bacon to keep the raccoons occupied, but those animals walked right by the plate I had left on the garage floor and headed straight for my trash.

                                                ******************

            I used to hunt, so I don’t have any philosophical objection, but it was quite startling last week when I heard that some bear hunters had killed a large male black bear who was travelling in the Lower Kintore area.

A few days after they killed that bear, some kids from down the road in Kincardine here reported that during a bike trip they saw a mother bear with three cubs. Not something I want to see when I’m fishing in Bubie Brook near Burns Hall. I’d say those kids are lucky they didn’t surprise those bears.

The bear shooting reminded me of when I was living in Birch Ridge and working in Perth-Andover as editor of the Victoria County Record. I came home one day about 4:30 pm and there in my garden, fifty feet from my porch, was or were the guts of a ‘harvested’ deer. It wasn’t an appetizing sight. I decided to have supper at Finnamores’ takeout. 

                                                    -end-

Vote for me on May 32nd (May 30)

For Blackfly Gazette May 30/18

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Tattoos and Tilley are in the news

                        by Robert LaFrance

            I grew up in the benighted hamlet of Tilley, and, at the golden age of seventy, I agree that it is time that Tilley had a mayor and council. Plaster Rock has one although it has fewer potato farms than Tilley. Also, because I was born there in Tilley in 1948, I retain Tilley citizenship and will be eligible to vote in the upcoming (or up-chucking) municipal election.

            In addition to that, I am also eligible to RUN for office in the new municipality of GTA (Greater Tilley Area). Therefore, I am announcing today that in September my name will be on the ballot in the section headed “Mayor, GTA”.

            Just thought I’d let you know.

                                                *********************

            It’s gotten to the point now where I feel as if I should go out and get a tattoo.

            Everybody I see on TV (except Donald Trump) has a tattoo and I feel that I should join the crowd. Even my dog Minnie is interested.

            When I was a kid about 90 years ago, grownups always cautioned us: “Don’t get a tattoo because you will get everything from Hepatitis D to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever to gangrene to syphilis and your arms and legs will fall off or else crumble into powder as you’re walking down the street!”

            I guess people today didn’t get that memo. Retired soccer player David Beckham has approximately 467 tattoos in areas that are visible even when he bears a business suit, and I’m not going to request a viewing of the rest, although the very idea sets a tremble among many women.

            Also when I was a kid, the idea of a woman having a tattoo was something bizarre, but in later years there was a woman I met in Burlington, Ontario and who had tattoos on her legs. I asked if she had any more, in areas not usually visible, and when I regained consciousness she was gone. It taught me a lesson: Have my medical insurance card on my person at all times.

            It is against my nature and my will to do any kind of research, but I did ask a fellow named John Google what percentage of the population of North America has or have tattoos. I was staggered to learn that, according to John’s statistics, 21% of the population have tattoos of some sort. I think that falls into the category that describes the kinds of lies: “There are lies, damned lies and statistics”. Probably the ones who gathered that statistic were working as pollsters in the 2016 U.S. election and predicted Donald Trump would finish seventh in the Electoral College vote.

                                                ****************

            It’s a few miles from Tilley, but the recent election in Venezuela was a landslide for the ruling party as was the latest election in Russia. In the South American country, the current president Nicolas Madura won by 90% or more because he had jailed two of the opposition leaders and his main opponent Henri Falcon, who collected a total of 1.8 million votes of about 7.5 million even as his party boycotted the election.

            Can NB Premier Brian Gallant be looking at this? It could be a win-win for this fall’s election. He could sling the leaders of the NDP and the Green Party in jail on some trumped-up (no pun intended) charge and then the Tory leader would surely boycott the election.

            But now I’m thinking: why in the world would an opposition leader think that boycotting an election is a good idea? What kind of LSD logic would he use? “Okay, we’ll punish that dictator by not voting. We’ll show him where the cat sat in the buckwheat”.

                                                *****************

Everything is so mealy-mouthed today. “Harvesting” deer? Come on. When I was a youngster, we shot them. A special note: I didn’t shoot any, because I was – now this is an estimate – the worst shot in the tri-county area, and you can include any three counties in that designation.

Concurrent jail sentences? This means that if you are sentenced to six years in jail for shooting a moose, you can be sentenced concurrently – serving it at the same time – to six months for shooting a human. I have often wondered why shooting a moose draws more jail time than shooting a human but lately, something to do with age, I’ve given up.

Whoever came up with these phrases that butcher English so much should be given a ‘high colonic’ (enema) and sent on a 12-mile hike. Maybe by the time he gets back I will be able to figure out what an occasional chair does the rest of the time.
                                                     -end-

1st column for Blackfly Gazette (May 16)

For Blackfly Gazette May 16/18

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

No going to Mars for this puppy!

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Sitting in my easy chair and watching television after a 2-hour brawl with my garden, I am hearing an astronaut tell an interviewer that she would like to be among the first to travel to Mars.

            I recovered quickly enough to avoid dropping my mid-afternoon snack (two chicken drumsticks, a big bag of Storm Chips and a big piece of homemade bread with banana) but I was still flabbergasted – not to mention gobsmacked. Why would anyone in her right mind want to take a 7-month space journey with almost zero chance of returning? I phoned my friend the Perfessor.

            “Some people are crazy, Bob,” he said. “They will do anything to get their names in the newspaper. Quite often it’s for the wrong reason – a suicide bomber is an example of that – but the main thing is fame or even infamy.”

            As usual, the Perfessor was spot on, as they say in Liverpool. I looked in the mirror and asked the guy there what he thought about the idea of my getting in a zillion dollar spacecraft and sitting with my bum on top of enough explosive material to obliterate Minto and Jemseg.

            “Don’t do it, Bob,” said my mirror. “You just turned seventy; don’t ruin it. If you want to be turned into space dust, that’s one thing, but the problem is you will be taking me with you and I have plans for this weekend.”

                                                ******************

            Like many New Brunswickers, I went fiddleheading last weekend after the weather had been sunny for several days, meaning the ferns should be starting to show their faces (at least their heads).

            I drove down to a little brook near here – I am not telling where – and I found the same thing I had found the first times I went out in 2017, 2016 and other years: I had waited too long. Three-quarters of them had grown out. I picked for half an hour and seemed to be doing well – my cloth bag was doing nicely I thought – until I got home and found only 81 fiddleheads. The rest had escaped through a hole in the bottom of the bag.

            That was enough for supper though, although my (long-suffering) wife and I had to count every one to make sure it was all fair. Even then, she had 41 fiddleheads and I only had 40.

            Refusing to tell where a person finds fiddleheads is a long-time tradition. I grew up in Tilley, where people have been known to indulge in fistfights over their fiddlehead zones. On one occasion two of the St. Peter brothers and two LaFrance brothers chased each other through the poplar woods for an hour until they were all exhausted and forgot why they were mad at each other.

            After the recent flooding in the lower St. John River Valley, we the consumers were warned not to eat fiddleheads from that area and that was another example of the hidden costs of such a spring freshet. I know people in Maugerville who had sold thousands of dollars of fiddleheads every spring and this ban, or ‘suggestion’, must be costing them big-time.

The first brilliant thing that came to my mind was: “Geez, all people have to do is wash the fiddleheads and once they are boiled for twenty minutes all will be well” but for the first time in my life I was wrong. A government website listed the number of extra items that might have been in that backed-up water: sewerage, toxic sprays from farms and businesses near the river and any number of things I wouldn’t want to take home to meet my mother. As the Russians might say: “Nyet to that, tovarich!”

                                    ******************

This spring I have ordered from no fewer than five seed companies, all located in eastern Canada; some of the companies have an interesting shipping policy.

One company, that shall go nameless, said there would be free shipping for any order over $30, a discount of 10% on all orders over $80 and a $25 bonus on all orders over $100.

I ordered $101 worth of garden seed, which, I assumed, meant that I would get that all for $68.40 once that 10% discount and the $25 bonus were taken off.

The company emailed me two days later to say I didn’t qualify for that $25 bonus because that took my total down to $76, which meant I also didn’t qualify for the 10% discount. Are you with me so far? I’m not sure I am.

                             -end-